Dark Waters
Kristine Potter’s Dark Waters is a reflection on the violence pervading the territory and popular culture of the southern United States of America. The American artist contrasts a series of portraits of women with waterscapes that appear serene but are in fact places with sordid names, such as Murder Creek, Bloody River and Rape Pond. These places are reminders of the violence during the colonisation period and have become part of the mythology of the American South. The artist deviates from the classic photographic depiction of the American landscape, as she draws inspiration from the murder ballads. These traditional Appalachian songs include vivid descriptions of battered and murdered women. The artist, based in Nashville, the birthplace of American country music, completed her project with a video installation produced with local musicians. Kristine Potter invites visitors into a dark concert hall to partake in a complex musical experience that is as fascinating as it is disconcerting. Although this project is based on a specific culture and a specific territory, it alludes more widely to the violent and gendered messages that creep surreptitiously into contemporary popular culture.
Kristine Potter was awarded the Grand Prix Images Vevey 2019/2020 for Dark Waters.
Dark Waters
Kristine Potter’s Dark Waters is a reflection on the violence pervading the territory and popular culture of the southern United States of America. The American artist contrasts a series of portraits of women with waterscapes that appear serene but are in fact places with sordid names, such as Murder Creek, Bloody River and Rape Pond. These places are reminders of the violence during the colonisation period and have become part of the mythology of the American South. The artist deviates from the classic photographic depiction of the American landscape, as she draws inspiration from the murder ballads. These traditional Appalachian songs include vivid descriptions of battered and murdered women. The artist, based in Nashville, the birthplace of American country music, completed her project with a video installation produced with local musicians. Kristine Potter invites visitors into a dark concert hall to partake in a complex musical experience that is as fascinating as it is disconcerting. Although this project is based on a specific culture and a specific territory, it alludes more widely to the violent and gendered messages that creep surreptitiously into contemporary popular culture.
Kristine Potter was awarded the Grand Prix Images Vevey 2019/2020 for Dark Waters.
Dark Waters
Kristine Potter’s latest photobook, Dark Waters, focuses on the violence that permeates the territory and popular culture of the USA. She contrasts a series of portraits of women with scenery that appears serene but is in fact views of places with sordid names, such as Murder Creek, Bloody River, and Rape Pond, evoking the domestic violence that allegedly took place there in the past. Drawing on the musical genre of murder ballads from the 19th and 20th centuries, Kristine Potter alludes to the flippant popular glorification of violence towards women that still pervades today’s cultural landscape.
Kristine Potter, USA (1977)
Dark Waters, 2020
Texts: Rebecca Bengal
Laureate of the Grand Prix Images Vevey 2019/2020
Publishers: Éditions Images Vevey (CH), Aperture (USA), The Momentary (USA)
Kristine Potter has enhanced her Dark Waters series of photographs with a video installation produced with musicians from Nashville USA where she is now based, recognised worldwide as the capital of country music. These folk guitarists play the murder ballads that are the beating heart of her photographic project: traditional songs that became iconic and that are still being recorded today, evoking vivid descriptions of battered and murdered women. Kristine Potter invites visitors into Le Cinéma in L’Appartement conveying the darkness of a concert hall in Tennessee to experience a fascinating and very moving musical escapade.
Kristine Potter, USA (1977)
Dark Waters, 2020
Laureate of the Grand Prix Images Vevey 2019/2020
Video: 23’4’’
